Connor Shaw sounds support for new USC offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains
Some South Carolina football fans were, to put it kindly, less than thrilled with the team’s hiring of Arkansas tight ends coach Dowell Loggains as its new offensive coordinator. Not Connor Shaw.
Shaw, the winningest quarterback in South Carolina history, took to Twitter last week to voice his support for Loggains after initial reports that coach Shane Beamer was zeroing in on the longtime NFL assistant coach as his replacement for Marcus Satterfield.
“If he’s the guy, we just got better,” Shaw, 31, wrote.
Shaw also praised Loggains as a “home run fit” in a video posted to South Carolina football’s official Twitter account after the school officially hired Loggains and announced him as offensive coordinator Tuesday.
“I can tell you this,” Shaw said in the video, “having played three seasons for Dowell in Cleveland and Chicago, this is a home run fit for the type of culture coach Beamer and that staff and the players inside the building are creating. I know the players are going to respond to Dowell in a very positive way, and (I’m) definitely looking forward to what they’re going to do on the offensive side of the football.”
Loggains spent the last two seasons as Arkansas’ tight ends coach under Sam Pittman, but the bulk of the 42-year-old’s coaching experience has come at the professional level.
Loggains spent 16 seasons in the NFL before joining Arkansas and, from 2010 to 2020, worked as either an offensive coordinator or a quarterbacks coach for the Tennessee Titans, Cleveland Browns, Chicago Bears, Miami Dolphins or New York Jets.
Shaw, who went 27-5 overall and 17-0 in home games as South Carolina’s starting quarterback from 2011 to 2013, crossed over with Loggains in Cleveland and Chicago.
Shaw made his sole NFL start as a Brown against the Baltimore Ravens in 2014 with Loggains as his quarterbacks coach and also worked with him in 2016, when Loggains was the Bears’ offensive coordinator.
“I certainly appreciated my development under Dowell in Cleveland and Chicago, and we had a lot of great times in that quarterback room as well,” Shaw said in the video.
Most of South Carolina fans’ frustration centered around Loggains’ track record as an NFL offensive coordinator. The former Arkansas quarterback and holder was a rising star within the Titans’ organization from 2006-13 and had a solid 1.5-year stint as offensive coordinator there.
Since leaving the Titans, though, Loggains hasn’t spent more than three seasons with an organization. In his last five full seasons as an offensive coordinator with the Bears (2016-17), Dolphins (2018) and Jets (2019-20), Loggains’ offenses ranked, on average, 29th out of 32 NFL teams in scoring offense (17.3 points per game) and 28th in total offense (299.1 yards per game).
“Regardless who is named OC, it’s fascinating to me how folks will predetermine results,” Shaw tweeted last week before Loggains was officially hired. “I’d say Beamer has far exceeded expectations to this point. Is it so challenging to have belief in what is being built? If you search for the negative in everything, guess what you’ll find?”
Satterfield, USC’s first offensive coordinator under Beamer, faced consistent criticism during two seasons in Columbia. After helping engineer South Carolina’s top two offensive performances of the season in upsets of Tennessee and Clemson, Satterfield accepted a job earlier this month as offensive coordinator and tight ends coach at Nebraska under newly hired coach Matt Rhule.
South Carolina finished its 2022 regular season 8-4 and ranked No. 19 in the final College Football Playoff Top 25 rankings. The Gamecocks will play No. 21 Notre Dame in the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida, on Dec. 30.
Shaw, who worked two seasons in an off-field role for South Carolina and also saw time as South Carolina’s interim quarterbacks coach in late 2020, said before Loggains was officially hired that he’d support his alma mater “no matter what” and encouraged fans to “believe in Shane.”
This story was originally published December 13, 2022 at 5:04 PM with the headline "Connor Shaw sounds support for new USC offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains."
